How restaurant inspections work in Florida
Who inspects Florida's restaurants, how results are graded, and how to read them on CleanPlate.
Florida is unusual: restaurants are licensed and inspected by a state business-regulation agency, not county health departments — one system, statewide, covering everything from Key West beach bars to Panhandle diners.
Who does the inspecting
The Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation (DBPR), through its Division of Hotels and Restaurants, inspects licensed food-service establishments across all 67 counties. CleanPlate covers thirty-five Florida metros from DBPR's published records.
How results are graded
Florida doesn't issue letter grades. Each inspection ends in a disposition — commonly “Inspection Completed – No Further Action,” a required follow-up, or in serious cases an emergency closure — and violations are tiered as high-priority (direct foodborne-illness risk), intermediate, and basic. CleanPlate maps dispositions to PASS/CONDITIONAL/CLOSED equivalents and surfaces the high-priority violation counts on each restaurant's page.
A quirk worth knowing: a Florida inspection can note high-priority violations yet still close “No Further Action” if they were corrected on site — the disposition, not the raw count, is the official outcome, and CleanPlate follows the official outcome.
Reading it on CleanPlate
Every Florida restaurant page on CleanPlate shows the establishment's current standing, its full inspection history with dates, and a link to the official agency behind the record. Grades are shown exactly as reported; where the source publishes no summary grade, the derived status is labeled as derived. Establishments with no inspection in over two years are treated as likely closed and excluded from search.